The
first abduction on record, this case was discovered almost by accident.
On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home on a
road in rural New Hampshire. They were a racially mixed couple: Barney
was black and Betty is white. The only reason I mention this is because
in 1961 race relations were tense at best and a couple in such an
environment would be less likely to want to draw any undue attention to
themselves. However, because a physician initially thought it might be
the underlying cause for emotional problems the couple later developed,
their incredible story came to light.

As they drove down the
highway, a disk-shaped object flew over the car. It stopped and hovered
two hundred yards away from them. They were avid birdwatchers, so they
had binoculars with them in the car. Imagine Barney's shock when he got
out of the car and saw through the binoculars that there were creatures
in the portholes of the disk, looking back at him! Basically, he
panicked! He ran back to the car and the two sped off. Later they
started feeling a little strange and noticed they could not remember
the previous thirty miles they had just driven; also, their watches
were no longer running, they had stopped cold.

Betty and Barney Hill with their drawing depicting what they saw.

Missing Time

Over
the next several weeks Betty began to have weird dreams and the couple
began to recall other odd things that had occurred on their road trip.
Looking back, they realized their trip had taken two hours longer than
normal and they couldn't figure out why. This later became the first
recorded case of missing time. They also had no recollection of what
they did during this two-hour period of missing time.

Physical Evidence

The
next day the Hills found twelve bright circles about the size of a
half-dollar on their car. When they placed a compass over the circles
the needle spun wildly.

Barney
began to exhibit a number of physical symptoms. A doctor attributed
them to stress since there seemed to be no other cause. Barney was next
referred to a psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, in an effort to find
the cause of the symptoms. As part of his treatment, Barney agreed to
undergo hypnosis. After the first session, the psychiatrist decided
that both Barney and Betty should be treated and hypnotized separately.
The independent sessions were set up so that neither Betty nor Barney
would have any conscious recollection of what they independently said.
This was done so that neither could discuss with the other what they
had told Dr. Simon. Each session was tape recorded.

What Really Happened!

Over
a period of several months, Betty and Barney told Dr. Simon a story of
what really happened that night. To say it was startling was an
understatement, but both of them were telling the exact same story each
from their own respective vantage point. That is, each story
corroborated the other. They had been picked up by alien beings and
taken aboard a space craft! They were both subjected to a number of
medical procedures. Barney had sperm extracted and Betty recalled being
told that the beings were performing a pregnancy test on her. Betty had
a long needle inserted into her navel. This was decades before
amniocentesis was developed by earth scientists.

The original star map drawn by Betty Hill as given to her byalien beings.

The Star Map!

One
of the most remarkable things about the Hill case, besides being the
first abduction case on medical record, was a star map. The aliens had
shown Betty a map consisting of stars and lines drawn between the
stars. Betty was later able to draw the map while under hypnosis. They
then asked her if she knew where her planet was on the map. When she
was unable to tell them, they abruptly ended the conversation without
telling her any more.

Movie of the Week

Though
Barney died in 1969, NBC made a movie out of the Hill's case. Entitled
The UFO Incident, it starred James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons as
Betty and Barney Hill.

The Little Gray Guys are
Zetas

Marjorie
Fish, an astronomer, took Betty's map and began to convert it into a
three-dimensional model to see if she could find out where these beings
were from. When a new catalog of stars, the Gliese Catalog, was
released she was able to come up with a final version that seemed to
make sense. The catalog allowed Fish to assign accurate distances
between the stars. The map indicated that the beings were from a planet
circling a twin (sun) star system, Zeta Reticuli, Which consists of two
stars, Zeta 1 and Zeta 2. Zeta Reticuli is very close to us in terms of
space distance. The planet is only 37 light years away (220 trillion
miles). The two stars are also a billion years older than our sun.
Fish's model was later confirmed by a computer. That is why the aliens
we often call little gray guys are sometimes also known as Zetas.

Marjorie Fish star map which confirms Betty Hill's star map.

Trade Routes

Some
contactees were told in the 1960s that intelligent life is more often
found in twin star systems, and that our solar system is unusual since
we have life with only one sun. MIT astronomer Fred Rasio says, "You
get the impression that most solar systems are not like ours."

On
August 19, 1998, the front page of the Los Angeles Times featured an
article about leading astronomer Andrea Ghez. Using the Keck telescope
in Hawaii (the largest of its kind in the world) Ghez determined and
declared that almost all new stars in the universe are, in fact, born
as twins.

Betty Hill had been given additional information by
her alien companions. They told her that the lines drawn between the
stars were trade routes. The thick lines were busy trade routes, the
thinner lines were routes used less often. Dotted lines represented
occasional expeditions.